Like this:

How do we make hydrogen from coal, and is it really a clean fuel?
April 13, 2018

I predict that hydrogen power will be zero-emission one day. It can be made in a variety of ways through pure water splitting (including electrolysis, or through solar thermochemical and photoelectrochemical technologies, to name a few). It’s not there yet in terms of price or practicality, but it is certainly on its way. Boosting development of the hydrogen economy through production from coal in the meantime is, in my book, not a terrible idea overall.

But as the article points out:Gasification processes that use hydrogen fuel cells on site can substantially increase their efficiency compared with traditional coal-fired power. However, depending on the end-use of the hydrogen, and subsequent transport processes, you might be better off in terms of energy output, or efficiency (and therefore carbon emissions), just straight-up burning the coal to make electricity. [bold added]

“We consider the triumph of the constructive method to be essential for our present. We find it not only in the new economy and in the development of the industry, but also in the psychology of our contemporaries of art. [My colleague] will champion constructive art, whose mission is not, after all, to embellish life, but to organize it.”

“The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything that is already finished, already made, or already existent in the world – it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by the way of the people.”

“Constructivism used the same geometric language as Suprematism but abandoned its mystical vision in favour of their ‘Socialism of vision’ – a Utopian glimpse of a mechanized modernity according to the ideals of the October Revolution. However, this was not an art that was easily understood by the proletariat and it was eventually repressed and replaced […]”

“Suprematism was developed in 1915 by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. It was a geometric style of abstract painting derived from elements of Cubism and Futurism. Malevich rejected any use of representational images, believing that the non-representational forms of pure abstraction had a greater spiritual power and an ability to open the mind to ‘the supremacy of pure feeling’.

Suprematism was a style of pure abstraction that advocated a mystical approach to art, in contrast with Constructivism, the major Russian art movement of the 20th Century, whose imagery served the social and political ideology of the state.”

The world’s tallest ocean waves are generated south of Iceland. From there, these giants roll into the Norwegian and North Seas.

The wind creates the waves

Strong winds are an important component in generating big waves.

“The stronger the wind, the higher the waves,” Aarnes says. “If the wind is allowed to work on the sea for a long time and over a long fetch, the waves will be big.”

Low-pressure systems always blow in from the west to Norway, and are often amplified as they cross the North Atlantic.

“This, combined with large temperature differences between different ocean currents and large areas like Greenland, makes the winds stronger and the waves extra large,” Aarnes said.
. . .
So it should come as no surprise that the highest single wave ever measured in the world by a fixed installation hit the unmanned Norwegian Drauper platforms in the North Sea on January 1, 1995.

London 16 April 2018. Rechargeable batteries are said to be a way to extend the appeal of rooftop solar installations, storing the energy generated during the day for use at night. Home energy storage looks set to become big business: Tesla has already entered the marketplace, looking to apply its expertise in batteries to generate a new source of income. Other big-name motor manufacturers are expected to follow.

However, a new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) reveals that consumers are in danger of being fleeced. The paper’s author, power engineer Dr Capell Aris, has examined the economics of battery stores and finds that in the UK their high cost means that they will never pay for themselves. As he explains:

“The price of batteries is relatively high, but the possible savings from adding them to a rooftop solar installation are quite limited, particularly as a fraction of the typical electricity bill. When you add up the costs and benefits, it is quite clear that they are a waste of money.”

But the more integrated applications of the technology, amounting to what’s known as a mild hybrid system, offer the greatest value — up to 70 percent of the benefit of a full hybrid at 30 percent of the cost, according to industry analysts. Continental projects that 48-volt mild hybrid systems will account for 14 percent of global new vehicle sales in 2025, as sales of vehicles powered exclusively by gasoline or diesel engines drop to 65 percent.

With more than 50,000 wind turbines in place across the U.S., wind power now accounts for 8 percent of the nation’s energy-generating capacity — and experts predict that figure could rise to 20 percent by 2030.

But all that clean, renewable energy comes with a high cost to the nation’s wildlife. Researchers estimate that 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed every year in collisions with the turbines’ spinning rotor blades and support towers. The risk to birds is highest at night

AncientPages.com – The ‘Thirteen Towers of Chankillo’ run north to south along a low ridge and form an artificial toothed horizon that spanned – almost exactly – the annual rising and setting arcs of the Sun, according to a study.

Is dark matter made of primordial black holes?
April 20, 2018, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2018-04-dark-primordial-black-holes.html
– – –
UPDATE 2:And there you have it: a quantitative answer to the question of whether black holes are made of dark matter or not. At most they can only be made of about 0.004% dark matter, and that’s the most optimistic number that applies only to the most massive ones! Thanks for a great question, Michael

Measuring devices for the world’s most extreme environment
April 20, 2018

Norwegian research scientists are contributing to the development of the world’s hottest geothermal well in a non-volcanic area. The goal is to exploit the inexhaustible supply of heat from the interior of the Earth, and this calls for equipment that can withstand the most extreme conditions.
. . .
The borehole is the world’s hottest geothermal well in a non-volcanic area. Because terrestrial heat is encountered close to the surface in Italy, the country is rich in areas suitable for geothermal drilling – with searing temperatures reaching 500-600 degrees Celsius, resulting in supercritical water that the researchers are hoping to discover. And they have very good reasons. If they can succeed in exploiting the energy in this water, they can drill geothermal wells that are ten times as effective as those currently in operation. This has the potential to reduce costs dramatically and pave the way for a fantastic energy future based on purely natural resources. However, in its supercritical phase, the liquid is corrosive and attacks any drilling equipment that encounters it. [bold added]

The State of the Solar Wind, Magnetosphere, and Ionosphere During the Maunder Minimum
March 2018

Abstract.

Both direct observations and reconstructions from various datasets, suggest that conditions
were radically different during the Maunder Minimum (MM) than during the space era. Using
an MHD model, we develop a set of feasible solutions to infer the properties of the solar
wind during this interval. Additionally, we use these results to drive a global magnetospheric
model. Finally, using the 2008/2009 solar minimum as an upper limit for MM conditions, we
use results from the International Reference Ionosphere (ILI) model to speculate on the state of the ionosphere.The results describe interplanetary, magnetospheric, and ionospheric conditions that were substantially different than today.

For example:
(1) the solar wind density and magnetic field strength were an order of magnitude lower;
(2) the Earth’s magnetopause and shock standoff distances were a factor of two larger; and
(3) the maximum electron density in the ionosphere was substantially lower. [bold added]

I would like to ask a simple question that, despite its importance to the weather, seems only to elicit arm waving.
Background
When water changes state from ice to water and water to steam, everyone can describe what is happening – indeed the warming phase change is the only one that is explained in any depth – complete with floating ice cubes and no change in water level. For example from Britannica we get:

“The heat of fusion for water at 0 °C is approximately 334 joules (79.7 calories) per gram, and the heat of vaporization at 100 °C is about 2,230 joules (533 calories) per gram. Because the heat of vaporization is so large, steam carries a great deal of thermal energy that is released when it condenses, making water an excellent working fluid for heat engines.”

Question
The question is as water condenses in the atmosphere 2,230 joules per gram is ‘released’ and when the water freezes a further 334 joules per gram is ‘released’. So as a gram of water is carried upward in a convective storm first it ‘releases’ 2,230 joules on condensing then ‘releases’ a further 334 joules on freezing. Note the word ‘released’ is used in most if not all descriptions. I have found _no_ descriptions of HOW the latent heat is released. I suspect that it is released as infrared photons and this can be seen on satellite imagery such as GOES; but the satellite imagery people state (sometimes forcefully) that what is seen is not the infrared from release of latent heat just temperature coded/colorized infrared (whatever that is).

A supplementary question is how does a water molecule store so much energy which is far more than CO2 and significantly alters the enthalpy of a volume of air. (According to engineering toolbox 100% humid air at 75F will hold twice the energy in kilojoules per kilogram, as 0% humidity dry air at 100F. So glibly ‘averaging’ ‘temperatures’ makes little sense. )

1) if 3 days is a big deal it just shows how necessary coal still is.
2) during the ‘Beast from the East’ coal power was working flat out.
3) the only like-for-like substitute for coal is gas, in terms of build cost and on-demand output.

PERMIAN BASIN IS GROWING INTO THE LARGEST OIL PATCH IN THE WORLD
Date: 25/04/18 Bloomberg

The Permian shale play is all about setting records. Now, the region may even become the world’s largest oil patch over the next decade.

Output in the basin is forecast to reach 3.18 million barrels a day in May, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s the highest since the agency began compiling records in 2007. By 2023, the basin may produce 4 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia is currently the world’s biggest oil field, with capacity of 5.8 million barrels a day, according to a 2017 EIA report.

In a twist that would ruin the storyline to the Wizard of Oz, the USA’s ‘Tornado Alley’ has been strangely quiet this year.

In fact, if there are none reported in Oklahoma or Kansas on Thursday, 2018 will officially be the quietest start to the tornado season in both states …on record!
. . .
The clue as to why it has been so quiet lies in the overriding weather patterns across the USA so far this spring. The jet stream, instead of digging down to the west of Tornado Alley, has pushed further south and east than you would normally expect.

This means the usual flow of warm and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico has deflected further east, and Tornado Alley has been stuck in abnormally colder, drier air.

The BBC has withdrawn Human Planet from distribution after admitting that the series faked scenes of an Indonesian hunter harpooning a whale. In all, there have been four fakery stories surrounding the series.

Results from a major study carried out by scientists from NUI Galway and the University of Maine have indicated that the physical impact of abrupt climate change in Britain and Ireland and maritime Europe may be markedly different from previous perceptions of these events.

Geologic data reveal that Earth is capable of abrupt, high‐magnitude changes in both temperature and precipitation that can occur well within a human lifespan. Exactly what causes these potentially catastrophic climate‐change events, however, and their likelihood in the near future, remains frustratingly unclear due to uncertainty about how they are manifested on land and in the oceans. Our study sheds new light on the terrestrial impact of so‐called “stadial” events in the North Atlantic region, a key area in abrupt climate change.

Ray’s link says: [they] found that the Younger Dryas was actually characterised by extreme seasonality. This means that although winters in Britain and Ireland were extremely cold, summers were a lot warmer than previously thought, a situation that is 180° from today’s highly maritime climate in this part of the world (mild winters and cool summers).

That would suggest the Gulf Stream was doing something different then.
– – –
They analysed shells on the west coast of Scotland…

While all of these shell species are still in existence in the North Atlantic, many are extinct in Scotland where ocean temperatures are too warm.

“Steve is a new type of aurora structure that can be seen in the northern or southern sky further south than the usual aurora,” MacDonald explains. “What we now know from the satellite observations is that this structure is associated with a very strong flow of the charged particles in the upper atmosphere that you can actually see when you’re looking at Steve. That signature from the satellite observations — this very narrow, long, purple arc — is actually something that scientists know and have studied for a long time. It’s something called a sub-auroral ion drift.”
. . .
“It’s more like a frictional heating mechanism that is producing some light and that light is in different wavelengths than what you normally see in the aurora.”

Impact of a real-world intervention offers a lesson for other cities
Date: April 27, 2018
Source: National University of Singapore

Summary:
A new study revealed that a beltway constructed to divert heavy-duty diesel vehicles traffic in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo has reduced public health damage associated with exposure to diesel. The positive health outcomes of the intervention could guide the formulation of similar transport polices in other cities, where humans and diesel vehicles reside and transit in close proximity.

I think this is of interest to a lot of people… I am in an epic batlle with Leif Svalgaard on What’s Up With That…

We will know in a few weeks if he lost… And it will be epic…

Leif you just tell fairy tales… Everybody knows you can see the overlap of cycles years beforehand… THE QUESTION IS WHEN WILL CYLE 25 OFFICIALLy START? Just look around and everybody agrees late 2019 or 2020-2021… It is even on the website from David Hathaway!
Solar Cycle 25 Prediction. We find that the polar fields indicate that Cycle 25 will be similar in size to (or slightly smaller than) the current small cycle, Cycle 24. Small cycles, like Cycle 24, start late and leave behind long cycles with deep extended minima. Therefor, we expect a similar deep, extended minimum for the Cycle 24/25 minimum in 2020.
Jan Alvestad speculates April 2018 IF the cycle doesn’t ramp up fast… I believe it will ramp up fast and my guess is March, 2018
And again… a reversed sunspot today on Solen Info website… Spooky hé
You will know shortly… I expect serious apologies because you blocked the publication of my sunspot theories…http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7246

Of course it is an oddball! The current activity ( or non activity) defies the explanation of more than 12,000 astronomers… But not mine… I am sure Leif Svalgaard and others will be in hot water before the end of July… If not sooner…

Currently all four giant planets are on the same side of the Sun (if you slice the disk in half). This will continue until the Jupiter-Saturn ‘opposition’ in 2030, when the Sun will finally return to somewhere close to the solar system barycentre.

Then from 2032-3 that process (all 4 same side) repeats until the early 2040s, but this time there’s no return to the barycentre.

I noticed this during the Beast when my battery died as I was taking pictures of the snow and again started draining fast over this last cool week;

When temperatures dip, the internal resistance of Li-ion batteries increases, lowering their capacity and causing them to become less efficient.

The lower the temperature gets, the worse this problem becomes – a battery that works fine at room temperature may only last half as long when it’s below freezing. Some users say their phones have drained alarmingly fast when they’ve been out in the cold for only a short period.

So with battery storage – which from what I’ve read are lithium ion – the supposed savior for inefficient* unreliable prayer wheel etc – how do/would batteries perform in Beasterlies? I have read photovoltaics drop off for every 1°C above 25°C but what about the other end when we go sub zero? If say we return to a climate of the 70’s, which is what Joe Bastardi has mooted due to thermal lag of oceans from grand maxima, how is it going to cope during the cooler periods?

Less than a month after Tesla unveiled a new backup power system in South Australia, the world’s largest lithium-ion battery is already being put to the test

Comparing solar motion: 1632-1671 with 1990-2030 (both periods = ~39.73 years = 2 Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions). The left half of the image has been rotated 90 degrees left.
The red crosshairs meet at the solar system barycentre.

Re 1632-1671: Maunder Minimum started around 1645. Are we near a 21st century minimum?

Summary: Left and Right in America are in thrall to propaganda. The latest in climate doomsterism demonstrates how this works. It does not explain why we love these stories. It does not explain how we can regain our skepticism and desire to see the world clearly.
. . .Climate alarmism serves a larger purpose for journalists. We live in what Peter Moore calls “the Crisis Crisis.” News exaggerated into fake news as too many journalists compete for clicks.

“It’s bad news Biblical style: plagues of swarming journalists are swallowing — and selling — every doomsday scenario in sight. …they’re talking crisis: drugs, vanishing rain forests, terrorism, Armageddon. They’re inflating stories to ten times their natural size, decrying the end of the world. Their graphics are flashier than video games, their footage better than MTV, their high-tension talk scarier than s-f.”

“the Crisis Crisis.” of Climate alarmism is nothing new. The doomsday displeasure of God for human transgressions is the foundation of the Bible with driving humans out of Paradise and the Great Flood. “Sacrifice your virgins and give us your money, We will save you from the wrath of god!” A con-game as old as humanity and it still works!…pg

In 1996, shortly after arriving at Jupiter, Galileo made a surprising discovery: Ganymede had its own magnetic field. While most planets in our solar system, including Earth, have magnetic environments — known as magnetospheres — no one expected a moon to have one.
. . .
As it cruised around Jupiter, Galileo also happened to fly right through an explosive event caused by the tangling and snapping of magnetic field lines. This event, called magnetic reconnection, occurs in magnetospheres across our solar system. For the first time, Galileo observed strong flows of plasma pushed between Jupiter and Ganymede due to a magnetic reconnection event occurring between the two magnetospheres. It’s thought that this plasma pump is responsible for making Ganymede’s auroras unusually bright.

Summary:
Atmospheric researchers report that a strong connection between sea surface temperature patterns is associated with the Global Warming Hiatus and changes in cyclone activity over the northwest Pacific Ocean, particularly increasing intensities in coastal regions of East Asia.
– – –Around the turn of the century, 1998-2012, the rate of temperature increase apparently slowed, and has since been labeled the Global Warming Hiatus. During this period, while the Indian and tropical north Atlantic Oceans warmed, the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean experienced La Niña-like cooling.

La Niña is usually characterized by cooler sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, pushing cyclone generation westward.

Could the footage recorded on my dash cam be used against me? Yes. If you’re involved in a collision, or are stopped by the police for committing an offence, then officers could seize your dash cam or could require you to present its footage for them to review.

GEM road safety officer Neil Worth adds: “Fitting a dash cam is a good move for road safety,” he says. “Once installed, it’s good to know it can protect you in incidents where it might otherwise be your word against someone else’s.”

An example (see below) of Charvatova’s 2402-3 year solar motion period? The Sun is at the solar system barycentre (where red crosshairs meet) at/near both dates.

It works out that J is approx. opposite the other 3 giant planets, giving a balance of forces.
J-S oppositions generally place the Sun near the barycentre anyway, because they are by far the 2 largest (known) planets in the solar system.

CO2 is a rare (0.04%) colourless natural atmospheric gas. It does not generate any heat – it just moves heat around. In the atmosphere, it may slightly reduce the solar radiation that reaches the surface, thus producing cooler days; and it may slightly reduce night-time radiative cooling, thus producing warmer nights. The net effect is probably a tiny net warming at night, in winter and in polar regions – all of which are probably welcomed by most people. Even this tiny effect reduces rapidly as CO2 levels rise.

From the linked pdf:“One of the most uncomfortable contradictions in current plate tectonic theory [is] the protracted collision between India and Asia. That the two continents should collide by subduction of the intervening ocean is reasonable; that India should continue to drive northward into Asia for some 38 million years after the collision is not.”
. . .
“Buoyancy considerations predict that shortly after such a continent-continent collision, a new subduction zone should form”.

‘Biggest Ever’ Sinkhole Has Ripped Open in New Zealand, And It’s Unearthing History
“What I see in the bottom of this hole is the original 60,000-year-old volcanic deposit.”

PETER DOCKRILL 7 MAY 2018

What is thought to be the largest known sinkhole in New Zealand has ripped open across a farm on NZ’s North Island, revealing a gigantic cavernous void estimated to have been decades or even a century in the making.

The Newark–Hartford astrochronostratigraphic polarity timescale (APTS) was developed using a theoretically constant 405-kiloyear eccentricity cycle linked to gravitational interactions with Jupiter–Venus as a tuning target and provides a major timing calibration for about 30 million years of Late Triassic and earliest Jurassic time. While the 405-ky cycle is both unimodal and the most metronomic of the major orbital cycles thought to pace Earth’s climate in numerical solutions, there has been little empirical confirmation of that behavior, especially back before the limits of orbital solutions at about 50 million years before present. Moreover, the APTS is anchored only at its younger end by U–Pb zircon dates at 201.6 million years before present and could even be missing a number of 405-ky cycles. To test the validity of the dangling APTS and orbital periodicities, we recovered a diagnostic magnetic polarity sequence in the volcaniclastic-bearing Chinle Formation in a scientific drill core from Petrified Forest National Park (Arizona) that provides an unambiguous correlation to the APTS. New high precision U–Pb detrital zircon dates from the core are indistinguishable from ages predicted by the APTS back to 215 million years before present. The agreement shows that the APTS is continuous and supports a stable 405-kiloyear cycle well beyond theoretical solutions. The validated Newark–Hartford APTS can be used as a robust framework to help differentiate provinciality from global temporal patterns in the ecological rise of early dinosaurs in the Late Triassic, amongst other problems.

The California Energy Commission, which will vote on the regulations Wednesday, estimates they would add an average $10,500 in construction costs for a single-family home but generate about $16,000 in energy savings. The standards also include requirements around ventilation and indoor air quality.

Network Rail denied a report in the Guardian which claimed the company was planning an “enhanced level of clearance” of trees from 2019 to 2024.

It said its policy was largely unchanged since 2004.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44069729
– – –A freedom of information response revealed that 30,000 trees were felled by Network Rail or their contractors on the west coast mainline between Euston and Carlisle in the 12 months between February 2016 and February 2017.

Network Rail said there were no plans to replace any of the trees in its FOI response.

The review will look at whether Network Rail has the capacity and capability to manage vegetation in a way that minimises harm to wildlife. It will also look at whether staff need more training — for instance in identifying approaches to managing them that would be better than felling.

In launching it, the Department for Transport has consulted with the Tree Council and the RSPB. The review will report its findings to the minister in the summer.

New Research Reveals How Energy Dissipates Outside Earth’s Magnetic Field

NASA mission, with help from a UMD physicist, is the first to observe a new type of turbulent magnetic reconnection, providing important clues about heating in the sun’s outer layers

Earth’s magnetic field provides an invisible but crucial barrier that protects Earth from the solar wind—a stream of charged particles launched from the sun’s outer layers. The protective properties of the magnetic field can fail due to a process known as magnetic reconnection, which occurs when two opposing magnetic field lines break and reconnect with each other, dissipating massive amounts of energy and accelerating particles that threaten air traffic and satellite communication systems.

Caption: The shape of the Van Allen belts can vary widely depending on how energetic the individual electrons are, and general conditions in the Earth’s magnetic environment. During geomagnetic storms (4), all three regions in the belts can balloon

Like other clouds, ice clouds affect Earth’s energy budget by either reflecting or absorbing the Sun’s energy and by affecting the emission of heat from Earth into space. Thus, ice clouds are key variables in weather and climate models.

Caption: There’s a lot going on in this chart. It shows the varying amount of lead pollution in the air, as measured from an ice core taken from the NGRIP site in northeastern Greenland. It augments this timeline with major events in Roman history and, after 300 B.C., the silver content of Roman coinage. The letters at the very top signify individual historical events, as follows: A: the Punic Wars, B: the Sertorian War, C: the Civil Wars, D: the final pacification of Gaul and Spain, E: the Antonine plague, F: the Plague of Cyprian, G: the Roman abandonment of Britain, and H: the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. (McConnell, et al. / PNAS)

We found that the grand minima sequence is produced by the coupling between Gleissberg and Suess cycles, the latter being responsible for the most intense and longest Spörer-like minima (with typical duration longer than 80 yr). Finally, we identified a non-solar component, characterized by a very long scale oscillation of ~ 7000 yr, and the Hallstatt cycle (~ 2000 yr), likely due to the solar activity.

Conclusions. These results provide new observational constraints on the properties of the solar cycle periodicities, the grand minima generation, and thus the long-term behavior of the solar dynamo.

A single transaction uses as much electricity as an average household in the Netherlands uses in a month. By the end of this year, he predicts the network could be using as much as 7.7 gigawatts—as much as Austria and half of a percent of the world’s total consumption.
. . .
If the price of Bitcoin continues to increase the way some experts have predicted, de Vries believes the network could someday consume 5% of the world’s electricity. “That would be quite bad.”

Koomey, a lecturer at Stanford, is now concerned that the same false alarm is ringing once again. This time, the shiny object is Bitcoin and the energy used to “mine” the digital currency.

The latest spotlight on the conversation came from a study published Wednesday that was produced by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries, who concluded that the Bitcoin network consumes nearly as much electricity as the nation of Ireland.

Koomey finds that assertion more than a little problematic.

“For two decades, people have been eager to overestimate electricity use by computing,” Koomey said. “My concern is that we simply don’t have adequate data to come to the strong conclusions that he’s coming to.”

The worsening cosmic ray situation is linked to the solar cycle. Right now, the sun is heading toward a deep Solar Minimum. As the outward pressure of solar wind decreases, cosmic rays from deep space are able to penetrate the inner solar system with increasing ease. This same phenomenon is happening not only above California, but all over the world.

Take another look at the data plot. The general trend in radiation is increasing, but it is not perfectly linear. From launch to launch we see significant up and down fluctuations. These fluctuations are not measurement errors. Instead, they are caused by natural variations in the pressure and magnetization of the solar wind.

University of Leeds spin-out company is partnering in Europe’s first bioenergy carbon capture storage project.

Drax Group plc, operators of Drax Power Station, has announced that it is to partner with C-Capture in a pilot project which, if successful, could make the renewable electricity produced at its North Yorkshire power station carbon negative.

C-Capture, a spin-out from the University of Leeds’ School of Chemistry, has developed new solvents for the capture of CO2 from power station flue gases, part of a process known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

“The ‘thrust’ is not coming from the EmDrive, but from some electromagnetic interaction,” the team reports in a proceeding for a recent conference on space propulsion.
. . .
When they turned on the system but dampened the power going to the actual drive so essentially no microwaves were bouncing around, the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust—something it should not have done if it works the way the NASA team claims.

The researchers have tentatively concluded that the effect they measured is the result of Earth’s magnetic field interacting with power cables in the chamber, a result that other experts agree with.

CAPTION: New data from NASA’s Cassini, Voyager and Interstellar Boundary Explorer missions show that the heliosphere — the bubble of the sun’s magnetic influence that surrounds the inner solar system — may be much more compact and rounded than previously thought. The image on the left shows a compact model of the heliosphere, supported by this latest data, while the image on the right shows an alternate model with an extended tail. The main difference is the new model’s lack of a trailing, comet-like tail on one side of the heliosphere. This tail is shown in the old model in light blue.
Credits: Dialynas, et al. (left); NASA (right)

Panels left in landfills may break apart and release toxic waste into the ground or even enter bodies of water. Solar panel disposal in “regular landfills [is] not recommended in case modules break and toxic materials leach into the soil,” Electric Power Research Institute determined in a 2016 study.

There is growing concern over the possibility of rainwater washing cadmium out of panels and into the environment.

The biggest of the canyons is called Foundation Trough. It is over 350km long and 35km wide.

To put that on a more recognisable scale – think of a deeply incised valley running between London and Manchester.

The two other troughs are equally vast. The Patuxent Trough is more than 300km long and over 15km wide, while the Offset Rift Basin is 150km long and 30km wide. And all of this relief is buried under many hundreds of metres of ice.

To get to the floor of Foundation Trough, for example, you would need to drill through over 2km of ice cover.
. . .
It is possible the troughs detected under today’s ice sheet were dug out during a previous glacial period when the ice over the continent was configured in a very different way.

More evidence electric car subsidies are welfare for rich people
May 25, 2018

Another report indicates electric vehicle ownership is mostly confined to the country’s highest income earners, further calling into question the validity of government subsidies for EVs.

On Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration released its analysis of EV ownership in the U.S., breaking down the percentage by household income. The EIA’s findings confirmed what has been a long-held criticism of zero-emission vehicles: they aren’t very popular, and only rich people can afford them. According to EIA, households with incomes of at least six figures make up nearly 70 percent of all EV purchases.

The Supreme Court of Gibraltar awarded the oil company Chevron $38 million Friday for damages related to charges alleging the company contaminated the Amazon region of Ecuador.
. . .
“In issuing this decision, the Supreme Court is holding the perpetrators of this fraudulent enterprise accountable for their actions,” Chevron Vice President and general counsel R. Hewitt Pate said in a statement. “In courtrooms around the world, this fraudulent scheme against Chevron Corporation continues to implode.”

Corruption and Incompetence Mark Los Angeles’ Attempt to Electrify Its Bus Fleet
Transit officials have spent $330 million on nonfunctional buses from a politically connected company.

While has BYD proved to be a deft influence peddler, the Times reveals that it is a less than sterling bus manufacturer. When the first five BYD buses hit Los Angeles’ streets in 2015, the vehicles averaged only 59 miles between charges, despite promises they could reach ranges of 155 miles. (Normal Metro buses have a range of about 385 miles before needing to refuel.) The BYD buses also stalled going up hills and required service 10 times more frequently than other Metro buses.

All the problems forced BYD to buy its own buses back from Metro after a couple months on the road in 2016. No BYD buses are currently operating in Los Angeles.

Another nail in the ‘settled science’ coffin?
– – –
This is another article from 2016

Sea surface microlayer in a changing ocean – A perspective

Abstract
The sea surface microlayer (SML) is the boundary interface between the atmosphere and ocean, covering about 70% of the Earth’s surface. With an operationally defined thickness between 1 and 1000 μm, the SML has physicochemical and biological properties that are measurably distinct from underlying waters. Recent studies now indicate that the SML covers the ocean to a significant extent, and evidence shows that it is an aggregate-enriched biofilm environment with distinct microbial communities. Because of its unique position at the air-sea interface, the SML is central to a range of global biogeochemical and climate-related processes. The redeveloped SML paradigm pushes the SML into a new and wider context that is relevant to many ocean and climate sciences.
. . .
Concluding remarks (extract)
Overall, we suggest that, due to its unique position, the SML will respond sensitively to climate change, but that understanding the influences of the SML on air-sea interactions in a future ocean requires holistic approaches in research that include studies of the physics, chemistry, and biology of the SML.

Me thinks the scum wrote the study.
All exposed water has a surface film. Nothing new here.Wind, air movement, of 3,000 feet per minuet will strip the film. The secret of dynamic air washing, about a 40 mph wind, The fume scrubber of the world is wind at sea, A salty sea and a strong wind has created the present atmosphere that WE enjoy…pg

Comparing apples with oranges, this story says nuclear is too expensive and slow to build, and thinks renewables are a better idea – ignoring their chronic unreliability.
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Construction delays make new nuclear power plants costlier than ever
May 29, 2018

A new analysis of the history of nuclear power plant projects shows since 2010 delays have contributed 18 per cent the costs.

These delays—which can run into years or even decades—increase the cost compared with older projects and are often overlooked when new projects are planned.

Until last week I knew that the PDO was an acronym for the Pacific Decadal Oscillation but little else. I now know a little more thanks to the Wikipedia and this very informative article from the North Carolina Climate Office of all places

N.Carolina C.O. says:Researchers have found evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: cold PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while warm PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through the mid-1990’s. [see lower portion of graphs below – click on image to enlarge]

I find the Twitter exchanges on here very interesing, it would be nice if there was a post or something where us not Twitter people could make comments or suggestions for inclusion in to the exchanges.

WesternLink HVDC – at a glance£1.3bn investment, part of RIIO – T1
More than 380km of subsea interconnector cables
Operating at 600kV, providing an additional 2,200MW of capacity
Capable of transferring power in either direction
Employing 450 employees and contractorsOperational: Q4 2017

Delayed again…

The Western Link has now been taken out of service to allow the completion of testing and commissioning, in preparation for making the link available for full load operation. During testing, a fault was detected. While it is being repaired and commissioning work continues, the link will remain unavailable. We will provide an update on any change in the status of the link as we proceed. Before commissioning, the Link had been operating at a capacity of up to 1125MW, and is expected to increase to its full capacity of 2250MW following the completion of full commissioning. According to the project plans this is expected in June 2018, although this is an estimate, as with any large complex project there is a risk that this could change. [bold added]